Defending the People

The newly-freed slaves found it difficult to adjust to the harsh realities of life in the wilderness:

“The people began to complain.... When God heard, He displayed His anger;
God’s fire flared out, consuming the edge of the camp” (Num.
11:1).

The people cried out to Moses for help, and Moses defended
them before God: “Moses prayed to God, and the fire died
down.”

The Torah does not record Moses’ prayers.
But the Sages wrote that Moses spoke out forcefully in
defense of the people. In fact, the Talmud suggests that
Moses’ prayers were valiant, even bold. Moses didn’t pray to God —
he prayed “against God” (Berachot 32a).

Praying Against God?

Rav Kook noted that the Torah rarely uses the expression “to pray to God.”
Often, the Torah simply states that a person “prayed.” It is
understood that prayer is directed towards God.

Yet there is an additional reason why the phrase “to pray to God” is
surprising. The Hebrew verb lehitpaleil (“to pray”) is in the
reflexive tense. This grammatical form emphasizes the
emotional impact of prayer back on the soul. The introspective
nature of prayer brings out an outpouring of enlightened
emotion within the soul.

It is fitting to speak of
praying lifneiHashem — a prayer which is “before God” or
“facing God.” This phrase indicates that we have
directed our heart and mind to contemplate God in prayer. As the Sages
taught: “Know before Whom you are standing in prayer.”

However, it is unrealistic to speak about
praying “to God.” The clarity of
enlightenment attainable by intellectual inquiry and
contemplation goes far beyond the emotional inspiration
experienced in prayer. To “pray to God” would
indicate that one attained a heightened awareness of the
Creator, and through concentrated prayer was somehow able to achieve an
emotional uplifting of the soul at this lofty cognitive level.

Moses’ Remarkable Prayer

Therefore the Sages emphasized the tremendous struggle
in Moses’ extraordinary prayer. It was as if he had
prayed “against God.” Moses defied the
natural limitations of prayer. This explanation is reinforced by a literal reading of the
Midrash, which says that Moses “hurled words
towards Heaven.” This projects the imagery of a person who forcefully heaves an object
upwards, fighting against the laws of gravity, as he throws an object higher than he can reach.

What enabled Moses to attain such a remarkable level of prayer? His
lofty soul flowed with such passionate yearning
to perfection that his prayer was able to surpass his
intellectual grasp of God’s providence of the universe. This
unusual phenomenon sometimes occurs with spiritual giants — a
testimony to the purity of their inner longings
for good and perfection.